Tag: Post-graduation

This morning when I woke up and grabbed my phone off my bedside table (as we millennials do), I got a bit of a shock when today’s date caught my eye. September 20th? Already?!

September 20th means it’s been a total of 4 months since I graduated from college. And I have no idea where all that time went. I suppose it must’ve somehow flown by as I was spending time doing absolutely nothing this summer. And, as if this shocking realization isn’t enough, I have also been receiving heaps of emails from the college inviting me to my class’ first Homecoming Weekend at the end of this week, which is just baffling to me. I have several feelings about this that I’d like to air:

Since when did it become OK to spring the fact that we are all of a sudden “alumni” on us, a mere 4 months after graduation, and invite us to Homecoming? We still have post-traumatic stress from senior year. I feel re-traumatized.

Wouldn’t Homecoming this soon after graduation basically just feel like “going back to school”? How are you even supposed to distinguish between the people who are still in college and the people who just graduated? We all look the same! We’re still the same age, and could still basically be them!

Isn’t the point of graduating that you don’t have to see all the people you dislike from your class on campus anymore? I think the only people who actually go back for Homecoming are a) people who didn’t dislike anyone on campus (seems impossible) or b) people who have gotten old enough that they’ve forgotten who they disliked and for what reasons. Which brings me to:

Homecoming Weekend is for adults who are 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. years out of college, who are reuniting with their class to reminisce about their college years and to judge each others’ successes to figure out who “won” in life and who didn’t. Which is all very nice. Homecoming Weekend should NOT, however, be for recent college graduates who are so unable to cope with the reality of being out in the “adult” world only after a few months that they’ll go to any lengths to feel like they’re still in college (including traveling back to the middle of nowhere-Pennsylvania and attend Homecoming Weekend celebrations).

Perhaps I’m being a little overly judgmental about this whole thing (I mean I definitely am), but I’m mostly just shocked at the sheer amount of time that’s gone by since we graduated. In a way, it feels like it happened so recently; at the same time, however, I feel like I am in a completely different place now than I was 4 months ago. When I graduated, I had no idea of what life would be like for me in this moment that I’m in right now — having completed my first three weeks of grad school. I was just looking forward to a summer of relaxing and figuring out my life before embarking on this next journey (and by journey I mean enslavement to academia). Looking back on it though, I definitely do not regret wanting to take my time over the summer to relax, spend time with the people I care about, and not really do much of anything. I think I would feel a lot more tired and stressed now, even this early in the semester, if I had spent the summer working and not had that time to just be a recent college graduate.

Thinking about all of this made me want to go back and look through my pictures from graduation weekend. I can’t even begin to express what an amazing time it was: having my whole family there all together, celebrating and constantly having a laugh, and seeing the look of pride on everyones’ faces — all of these people who I so greatly admire — when I got my diploma. It was the best weekend ever.